Pleasure (your) Chest
This offering is our love letter to post-op trans masculine spectrum people.
Join Kori Doty & Jess DeVries for an experiential workshop series specifically created for trans masculine folks who have completed top surgery; holding space in community to explore grief, consent and pleasure from an embodied understanding.
Throughout the process of pursuing top surgery you can become so focused on the final outcome that you have to compartmentalize the myriad of emotions that are felt along the way. The medical team can prepare you for the healing process from surgery, but doesn’t have the knowledge or the capacity to teach you how to explore pleasure in your body as it is in this moment. Quite often you overlook certain losses and the grief that come with them to focus on the fact that you finally have had your surgery. This is a space to express the fullness of your experience and learn skills to support your body and your pleasure.
Session One: Establishing the Group Container
Session Two: Dipping Our Toes into Grief
Session Three: Learn and Practice Embodied Consent
Session Four: Individual Pleasure Practices to Expand Erotic Possibility
This Workshop is For You:
If you have had any type of masculinizing top surgery
If you have noticed complicated feelings during or after the surgical process
If feeling into boundaries and embodying consent are skills you want to learn or practice
If you want more access to, and practices that support, your pleasure
If you want to feel more at home in your body
Other Important Details:
Location: Private Zoom Room with Captions
Dates: Saturdays; January 18th & 25th, February 1st & 8th
Time: 10am - 12pm PST
Cost:
$250- Full price: For those who are gainfully employed and/or have other trappings of financial security like owning a home or having access to intergenerational wealth. Folks who can pay this price help make it possible for us to offer the other scales to those who need it. If you pay the full price and would like to further contribute to access for others, you can contribute to our community care fund.
$175- Medium price: For folks who may have consistent income, but also have consistent significant draws to your funds like rent that’s too damn high and/or credit card or medical debt. Folks who pay this middle price help support the livelihood of the providers while also taking into consideration the need to be modest with their spending.
$125- Budget price: For folks who may have inconsistent or insufficient access to income, including gig workers, emerging artists and disabled folks without support pensions to compensate for their inconsistent ability to perform within capitalism. If this price is outside of your ability and you would like to participate in the course, we have created the community care fund to help provide scholarship opportunities- be in touch with us by email (jess@belovedcoaching.net or softtouchbodies@gmail.com).
Payment Plans:
Payments are collected through the scheduling platform “Practice Better” which allows participants to schedule payments on a delayed payment schedule, spreading the cost out over 5 months. At this payment schedule the monthly payments are as follows $50/month full price, $35/month medium price, $25/month budget price. All fees must be paid in full within 5 months of the start of the class.
Please check out our fundraising efforts to support future students access to scholarships and bursaries for hands on scar support bodywork. LINK to Community Care Fund
Space for 10-15 participants.
Testimonials:
I appreciate the small group. Originally, I wanted a larger group so I could hide and not necessarily contribute but the smallness allowed for a really intimate connection and for me to actually share my experience in ways I do not normally. This workshop helped me hold grief for something that also brought me the deepest sense of joy and presence in my body. Both can exist together and must be honored. Thank you for that. I am deeply appreciative of this experience. - anon -
What did you take away from this workshop?
I have the choice to give consent or to withhold it. I can embody that power of choice. My scars are a part of me and I can live in this body and experience pleasure. I can know with 100% certainty that top surgery was the right decision for me, and still experience grief about losing a part of my body. - Ellis -
I am taking away a much deeper connection to my body. I feel seen and acknowledged in a way also that I didn't know I was needing, but which spoke to me deeply. - W.Y. -
The self compassion really hit home for me. Acknowledging that feeling safe in my body is paramount above all else. The ability to talk through and work through a lot of the grief that was unbeknownst to me prior to taking the workshop. It really opened my eyes to what encompasses the removal of tissue that I had on my body for a long period of time. -S.R.-
This workshop offered me an incredibly meaningful space to connect with others who've experienced top surgery... the sense of care, resourcing, and gently held space was profound. - anon -
Meet my Co-facilitator:
Kori is a trans non-binary educator with a background in sexual health and harm reduction. They are based in Lekwungan Territories (colonial Victoria, BC) and are a student of the Institute of Somatic Sex Education. Their work with groups and individuals around personal and collective liberation has been punctuated as they took time to gestate and parent a child, have top surgery, care for a partner with cancer, have bottom surgery, and has mostly been online since spring of 2020. Their experiences with gender affirming surgeries included numerous complications and their recovery work included being a student in the first iteration of Pleasure (your) Chest, as well as extensive interdisciplinary body work and self care. They descend from European settlers and walk through the world with access usually granted to white men; utilizing these privileges with integrity is a project that they try to approach with humility and nuance.